Hey there FSM gang, I’m hoping one of you will know what this was spooling up on the ship shown below. Would it likely have been rolling up: Rope? Chains? Hose? I’ve seen these on more modern ships and always thought they were fire hose spools, didn’t think a ship from 1890s would have such. Sorry for the low res - you can zoom in on the picture with the browser’s zoom - but the quality is still poor.
Any help would be appreciated.
Could you get any clearer photos of the piece of equipment? It is a little bit blurry.
I enlarged the source and cropped it down to the lower example, Keep in mind this is a blurry picture of a model… It seems to be a really good one - but it still may not be 100% accurate,
As you no doubt have, I went down an interesting rabbit hole trying to find information on that item but found nothing outside of the model that you are showing in the image. It appears to be a hose reel for a fire hose but I can’t be certain. I hope someone can shed light on this mystery.
They’re cable reels, for wrapping lines to keep them in a semi-ready manner. As opposed to coiling them on the deck. Given the period of your ship the lines were most likely to be fiber. Modern cable reels may carry either steel or fiber lines
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I will invoke the devil and ask chatgpt. With the enlarged and original pictures along the name amiral duperré, here is what the arch nemesis had to say 
Given that wider photo and the fact it’s almost certainly the French ironclad Amiral Duperré (the 1880s barbette battleship, not the later ferry), I’m still not able to be 100% categorical, but the most plausible identification is:
a small manual deck winch / warping capstan with a hand-wheel
(used for handling lines/boats, not a steering wheel or gun control)Why I’m leaning that way:
On Duperré the area you’ve circled is on the centerline between the barbette and the forward superstructure, where plans and photos show various small capstans, hatches and ventilators, not guns or steering positions.
The thing clearly looks like a spoked wheel in a metal frame on a low base – exactly how a little manual winch or warping engine is modeled at that scale.
Gun training/elevation wheels of the period are normally mounted on the gun carriage itself, not as a separate object a few meters away. The big barbette gun you see to starboard would have its own gear inside the barbette, not out on open deck.
It’s also not in a spot that makes sense for a steering wheel (those are on or near the bridge/conning tower; emergency steering is aft).
So for modeling purposes I’d treat it as:
A compact winch/warping capstan with
a small horizontal base,
a vertical frame,
a 3–4-spoke handwheel.
If you want to be extra “French 1880s” about it, imagine it as one of those slightly over-ornate little cast-iron jobs they loved to sprinkle around the deck for handling mooring lines and boat falls.
Short version: it’s almost certainly some sort of deck winch with a handwheel, not a helm or gun wheel.
A long wind up way of, apparently, confirming what EdGrune said !
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Thanks a lot for your feedback guys, DrKoin - I’ve also used Chat GPT a bit for this type of work but it’s often a slog to get from A → B and I was hoping someone here would just know. Thank you for the research. On modern ships I’ve always thought these things were hose spools, seeing them on Duperre kind’a had me wondering if damage control was really that advanced on these old ironclads. By in large I’ve been having a grand time modeling this old ship in Blender, am now getting to all the little doodads that can be a bear to figure out from blurry 100 year old photos and the occasional one angle museum picture. Thanks again for the help.